WIGGING OUT WITH A SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
“You’re a boy, how come your hair is long?”
A lot of kindergarten kids asked me that, they’re gender stereotypes well in place.
It wasn’t only five-year-olds who thought that way, of course. An older sister was so shocked when she saw my long hair she wasn’t sure she would let me in her house.
Reason enough to wonder, then, what a school administrator would think if he knew the person who was to be in charge of a teacher-training program at an elementary school in his district wore his hair long. When you seek to do something in the schools different from the customary, you don’t want to provide unnecessary reasons for balking. As we all know, bureaucrats are skilled in that.
I'd decided it would be politic to go around and introduce myself to the administrator. But if he saw my pony tail what would he think? ‘One more radical education reformer--a university type, too--out to change the school system with hair-brained ideas’ (pun intended)?
I'd purchased a wig, which I half-seriously thought might come in handy sometime to cover up my long hair. That time had come. The reform for which I was struggling--getting some classroom reality into teacher training--was worth the dissimulation.
I parked across the street from the former schoolhouse where the area administration had its offices. It was one of those old schoolhouses with windows so high you couldn't see the street sitting down. (Gotta keep those kids from wanting to go outside!) The windows, though, would come in handy.
The wig--thick, wavy brown hair complete with hair net and bobby pins--wasn’t the hairstyle I would have preferred. And it took some dressing to keep it from looking like a fright. But, checking it in the rearview mirror to be sure it was in place, with my pony tail tucked neatly underneath, I grabbed my briefcase and headed for the man’s office.
When I was ushered into his presence what should I discover but a bald-headed man sitting behind the desk. I wondered, ‘I have trouble with my hair, does he have trouble without his?’
Shortly after sitting down, I began to have the distinct feeling that my wig was sliding up. The heat from my body had something to do with it. Controlling an incipient desire to rush out of the room and rip the wig off, even if it meant disclosing my shameless cover-up, I crossed my arms on top of my head--a gesture sufficiently common to look normal. But I couldn’t keep all the edges of that wig from their alarming creep. I did all I could to hurry the visit along.
I managed to get out of that office and the school building hoping I hadn’t been, you might say, uncovered. I imagined eyes peering out of every window. I checked in the mirror: Yes, there it was, a line of my dark brown hair showing under the wig of light brown hair! Had anyone noticed? I decided to leave it on until I was out of sight of the building.
And then I realized to my horror that I had left my briefcase in the man’s office. I would have to go back and retrieve it. I adjusted the wig once more, tugging it to get it fairly well down on my head, trying to hide what I was doing from those eyes I imagined peering out of those tall windows. I was perspiring now and that was oiling the upward creep.
Dashing inside I breathlessly asked about my briefcase, but no one had noticed I’d left it behind. When it was finally fetched I hastily thanked the secretary, grabbed it in one hand, the other atop my bewigged head, and dashed out the door.
Well, I thought, people wearing toupees also have trouble making their rugs look normal.
My program was approved despite my apprehensions, and another sin against education would be averted. But, alas, only for the 20 co-eds in the experimental program.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
IT'S THEIR WAY, NOT MY WAY
After spending the night with students who had occupied the UCLA Administration Building, their leaders asked me to speak at a mass meeting in the morning. As students and faculty packed Royce Hall I began scribbling some notes.
I linked the takeover with the new social and political views of education emerging on campuses throughout the country in the 70s; looking at higher education as a political institution, questioning its nature, control and purpose in relation to different segments of society.
It was the product, I suggested, of young minds with fresh ideas engaging in serious thought about their university and society. But now they weren't just thinking about it, they were doing something about it.
Philosopher Sydney Hook--an avid student of John Dewey, famous advocate of learning by doing--had rejected that idea. Speaking for a lot of people inside and outside higher education, Hook asseverated that it was “perfectly appropriate" for students to study class conflict, but not to practice it; to study revolution but not to practice it; to study democracy but not practice it. Not, at least, in the university.
A perfect example, I maintained, of how we separate what is learned in school from what is often--and tellingly--called the "real world."
The audience seemed largely to go along--though I detected some hooting here and there. Coming from some of my colleagues, I suspected. I wasn't preaching to the choir or the converted entirely, and I was making the most of it!
“It was inevitable,” I continued, “that young minds, less patient than their elders, less inclined to adjust and compromise, should begin to ask how the wrongs in society and in its institutions can be righted, how they can be reformed. Especially their own university.”
And then my grand peroration:
“Incomplete and incoherent as its articulation may be, strident and demanding though it can sound, and yes, disturbing to the status quo, the vision of these students is nothing less than a new college, a new university in which the old barriers are broken down, education is more de-campused, and new curricular and instructional methods are developed and used for new educational purposes.
“Perhaps to some it may be surprising that the concern of the students is basically educational. The Administration Building takeover was an educational act.”
Cheers and applause from the students; hoots from colleagues. I was told later my Dean looked around disbelievingly and asked, “Do all these students know Tom?”
I have often thought of that appearance before a packed Royce Hall, and fantasized that instead of my comments I had a piano wheeled out and accompanied myself on a version of Paul Anka's "My Way." First heard in 1970 on Minnesota Public Radio, it's titled "Their Way":
I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends, and had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say, not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned so many things, although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required. I didn't choose them.
You'll find that you'll survive, it's best to act the doctrinaire way,
And so, I snuggled down, and did it their way.
There were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end, I did it their way.
Thinking that was the end, people all over the hall were standing and cheering. But I waved them to wait. There was more:
And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, I've now become the cruel oppressor.
With me, you'll learn to cope. You'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
Like me, you'll see the light, and do it their way.
For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two
And if this seems a bit routine, don't talk to me, go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay. We do it their way.
I would have been a campus sensation.
(Words for "Their Way" by Bob Blue, adapted by Bright Morning Star, Minnesota Public Radio. Available from Flying Fish Records. Thanks to Lara Blue for permission to use here.)
After spending the night with students who had occupied the UCLA Administration Building, their leaders asked me to speak at a mass meeting in the morning. As students and faculty packed Royce Hall I began scribbling some notes.
I linked the takeover with the new social and political views of education emerging on campuses throughout the country in the 70s; looking at higher education as a political institution, questioning its nature, control and purpose in relation to different segments of society.
It was the product, I suggested, of young minds with fresh ideas engaging in serious thought about their university and society. But now they weren't just thinking about it, they were doing something about it.
Philosopher Sydney Hook--an avid student of John Dewey, famous advocate of learning by doing--had rejected that idea. Speaking for a lot of people inside and outside higher education, Hook asseverated that it was “perfectly appropriate" for students to study class conflict, but not to practice it; to study revolution but not to practice it; to study democracy but not practice it. Not, at least, in the university.
A perfect example, I maintained, of how we separate what is learned in school from what is often--and tellingly--called the "real world."
The audience seemed largely to go along--though I detected some hooting here and there. Coming from some of my colleagues, I suspected. I wasn't preaching to the choir or the converted entirely, and I was making the most of it!
“It was inevitable,” I continued, “that young minds, less patient than their elders, less inclined to adjust and compromise, should begin to ask how the wrongs in society and in its institutions can be righted, how they can be reformed. Especially their own university.”
And then my grand peroration:
“Incomplete and incoherent as its articulation may be, strident and demanding though it can sound, and yes, disturbing to the status quo, the vision of these students is nothing less than a new college, a new university in which the old barriers are broken down, education is more de-campused, and new curricular and instructional methods are developed and used for new educational purposes.
“Perhaps to some it may be surprising that the concern of the students is basically educational. The Administration Building takeover was an educational act.”
Cheers and applause from the students; hoots from colleagues. I was told later my Dean looked around disbelievingly and asked, “Do all these students know Tom?”
I have often thought of that appearance before a packed Royce Hall, and fantasized that instead of my comments I had a piano wheeled out and accompanied myself on a version of Paul Anka's "My Way." First heard in 1970 on Minnesota Public Radio, it's titled "Their Way":
I came, I bought the books, lived in the dorms, followed directions.
I worked, I studied hard, made lots of friends, and had connections.
I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say, not in a fair way.
But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned so many things, although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required. I didn't choose them.
You'll find that you'll survive, it's best to act the doctrinaire way,
And so, I snuggled down, and did it their way.
There were times I wondered why I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all, I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I learned to bend, and in the end, I did it their way.
Thinking that was the end, people all over the hall were standing and cheering. But I waved them to wait. There was more:
And so, my fine young friends, now that I am a full professor,
Where once I was oppressed, I've now become the cruel oppressor.
With me, you'll learn to cope. You'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
Like me, you'll see the light, and do it their way.
For what is a man? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two
And if this seems a bit routine, don't talk to me, go see the Dean.
They get their way, I get my pay. We do it their way.
I would have been a campus sensation.
(Words for "Their Way" by Bob Blue, adapted by Bright Morning Star, Minnesota Public Radio. Available from Flying Fish Records. Thanks to Lara Blue for permission to use here.)
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